README

tpwordle

A Wordle clone written in Turbo Pascal 5.5. This is a little retro programming experiment.

How to compile (Linux)

• This should compile with Free Pascal
• I have tested only Linux Mint 22.3, not other operating systems yet

How to compile (DOS)

• Get DOSBox
• Download and install Turbo Pascal 5.5 - it's freeware now
• Configure DOSBox so that the Turbo Pascal installation directory is in PATH and mount the directory with the source file to a drive letter inside DOSBox
• mount C /home/user/git/tpwordle maps the directory git/tpwordle inside the user's home directory to C:
• Run tpc /b tpwordle.pas to compile all source files, then you should have a tpwordle.exe

How to run

I've just found out that you need DOSBox even when you only want to run this program, which was a bit surprising to me. Tested it on 64-Bit Windows 10, you may have more luck on older Windows versions :-)

Anyway, here's a download

What I learned

• It was quite easy to get familiar with Turbo Pascal again. The documentation and sample programs that come with TP 5.5 are very helpful (they had to, because very few people could just look up stuff on the Internet in 1989). There are a few quirky things though - strings cannot be longer than 256 characters and you don't have "modern" lists, hash maps etc. out of the box.
• The language is still very nice and easy to read. The debugger has almost all the features you really need. The only things missing are the evaluation of expressions (as oppposed to single variables) and stack traces.
• Not being able to have multiple files open in the IDE really kills you in 2026. This came only with TP 6.0 in 1990. I started using VSCode with a Pascal extension after a few hours.